E-mene-mo-ne-wo-men (We Had remembered)

It's Memorial Day, and I just remembered my favorite Greek word.

E-meme-mo-ne-wo-men. I think it was the plu-perfect for "we had remembered."

Nice sound. Seven syllables. A fun word to run by your tongue over and over and over and over and over.

Those Greeks... they liked to be very precise. Six tenses and all. They could say EXACTLY what they wanted to say. Very left brain.

I'm sitting in the airport on the way to Baltimore, remembering. Moving from left brain to right, over and over and over and over the memories of what matters to me the most.

My beautiful wife who had put up with me for 30 years. My wonderful children - 20 and 16 - who care deeply for the world and donate so much joy to my emotional bank account when I feel depleated. My 89 year-old dad who is slowly slipping away, but who can remember the names of ever soldier in his outfit. My crazy sisters. My mom, who ate her 76th birthday cake in the hospital before volunteering for the surgery that closed her eyes on this side of eternity and opened them to God.

Runyon Peterson, who knocked down the walls of Buchenwald Prison Camp and freed Elie Weisel, then built a church in a sugar beet field for my pasor dad after stuffing the ballot box at Dilworth Lutheran Church. Dave Reyerson, the best social studies teacher an 8th grader could ever have, who left teaching to sell insurance because teaching didn't pay enough. Mrs. Gracila Wilborn, the Spanish teacher who kept me alive in college when Dr. Georgicas, my Greek professor, was trying to kill me. Uncle Frank Melheim, who enlisted in the Navy in WWII to see the world and spent the whole war in San Francisco. (Tough job, but someone had to do it.) His son Greg Melheim, who worked for Obama in Chicago when Obama was only one of 10,000 social organizers. My friend Arlen, who has cared for me as a brother and supported me in ways that few brothers would do. Father Gahns, the Catholic priest in Dilworth who was rumored to keep kids in his storm cellar.

Bob Skare, who worked in Military Law and intelligence during the Korean War, then donated a ton of money to start a preschool based on my research and early learning theories. A preschool that I haven't figured out how to invent. Yet.

Monty and Tom, who keep me honest. Gene and Brad and Mike and Victor and Cynthia and Lauren and Chris and Chris and Angie and TJ and Dan and Brian and Tim and Amy and Mike and Zanny and Phil and Todd and Rick and Craig and Gary and Jeannie and Charles and Mark and He Qi and SongYang and Kara and Brad and Kathy and Steve and Ann and Tim and Victor and all the folks who believe and try and do and fail and pick themselves up and try again.

We had remembered.

We.

It's not just me.

Had.

It's past. But it's now, too.

Remembered.

To become a member with - a part of - the memories that matter again.

For a guy who spends most of his life in the right brain, it's good to return to the left from time to time.

Happy Memorial  Day.

PS: I'm in Phoenix, MD, tomorrow, then Basking Ridge, NJ, then Phoenixville, PA, then Ashburn, WA, then Richmond, then a trip through the Smokies to Nashville.

Comments

[Angie]

It's not just you. But it is you. We had remembered. Re-member. That's what it's all about. Keep re-membering.